Crosswalks to Nowhere

Romance ain't dead. It's just taken on a different form. Here's some nice Valentine's Day candy that says it all. :-)

Ray Rayner passed away yesterday. For those of you who didn't grow up in Chicago, Ray was the guy who hosted a kid's morning show on WGN-Channel 9 that *everybody* (including adults) watched. It was a great free-form show where he introduced cartoons, gave the weather and sports highlights, traffic and school closing info, and a lot of other goofy stuff. A show like this would never be aired today-- nobody in the corporate TV world would have the patience for it. Here is a link to an article about Ray on WGN's web site.

The thing about Ray is that he never took himself seriously. You got the feeling he genuinely enjoyed what he was doing, and when he'd mess up on the air he'd just laugh and keep going. He always talked to his crew while he was on the air, too. The closest thing that compares would be radio shows like Steve Dahl's or Howard Stern's (without the filth, of course :-). One of his ongoing bits was that he'd wear these jumpsuits with notes stuck to it. At an appropriate point in the show, he would pull one of the "notes" off his suit and read what was coming up next. ("Looks like we've got Bugs Bunny next.")

And I'm sure he's trying to glue some sequined ribbon to a paper plate somewhere in the sky right now.

Oh, and Happy Chinese New Year to all you Monkeys out there.

Today's lyric comes to us courtesy of The Pretenders. I was in a discussion about romantic songs and this one came to mind-- another long-forgotten song that just kinda jumped out of the back of my brain. It's got an interesting middle-eastern feel to it, so light the candles and burn the incense on this one (I think those are Hare Krishna chants at the end). This is from the 1986 "Get Closer" album.

So I started off with something cynical and ended with something nice. How about that?

---

There's an article in the Wall Street Journal today about how Bob Ross, a painter who used to have a show on PBS, is more popular today than he was when his show went off the air in 1993.

The interesting thing is that Bob's been dead for almost 9 years.

Evidently, his videos and art supplies live on, and as one of his fans said, "Bob reversed the idea that you needed talent to paint." I had a girlfriend who used to love watching Bob paint (as he referred to them) "happy little trees."

I tried to find something on the Internet that's not overly nasty about ol' Bob, but maan, there are a lot of bitter artists and wannabes out there. I wouldn't put his stuff up on my wall, but some of these people go after him with flamethrowers-- time to switch to decaffeinated, maybe. Here is his official website.

I just noticed that tonight Turner Classic Movies is showing the Cecil B. DeMille epic King of Kings. I was planning on turning in early, but this one is worth staying up for. It's been years since I saw this movie, and with Mel's movie still fresh in my mind it would be a good opportunity to do a comparison.

Evidently, this movie caused its own controversy when it was released in 1927.

I'll have a report for you guys tomorrow.

(And I hope you all enjoy the bit of Washington State on the webcam page. It'll be frozen there for a little while. :-)

Yesterday, someone said to me "radio should be free." I agree with this sentiment.

I've had a bunch of people ask me when I'm going to get an XM or Sirius receiver. These suggestions come from people who know that I have a long-standing affection for radio (see Exhibit A) and my tastes in music are pretty eclectic (see Exhibit B), so it would seem a good choice for me.

On top of it, every time I'm in Trader Joe's, they have XM playing overhead, and I think "Wow, I haven't heard that song in a long time," or "Hey, that was an interesting transition." I have few concerns about the quality of programming on these services.

I dunno. I just have this internal block that prevents me from dropping $10 a month to pick something up that's floating through the air. At least with cable TV, there's tangible evidence of what you're paying for: that piece of black RG59 coming out of the wall (and yes, I know that ultimately the signals come out of the sky and my theory falls apart, but just go with me on this for a second). And there's the thing about how the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon keep the Pixie Chicks busy.

It just seems to me that if anyone in the radio business really loved the medium, they could do it right. When I tune across the dial in Chicago, I hear commercials, dance music, commercials, talk, commercials, commercials, something I can't define, and commercials.

Part of this has something to do with the fact that most of the major stations here are owned by Clear Channel, Infinity/CBS, Bonneville, or one of the other big corporations. And nobody's taking any chances.

When I was growing up, you listened to either WLS or WCFL, the two Top-40 stations. And as we all know, when you listened to these stations you would hear Stevie Wonder, followed by Led Zeppelin, then the Partridge Family... okay, so I'm showing my age. The point is, there was a mix.

When you graduated to FM, we had WDAI and WSDM, the true album-rockers, and WBBM-FM which started out as another album-rocker but then they softened up a little. If you were a hard-core progressive radio fan, you'd listen to WGLD or WXFM's Triad Radio, which even as a kid I knew was totally cool. Take a look at the bands they played.

By the time I was out of high school, the landscape had changed to the point where the only decent station on the air was WXRT (born of the ashes of "underground" WGLD), and maybe the college stations at Northwestern (WNUR) or Northeastern Illinois (WZRD). The rock stations, especially WLUP ("The Loop") played a steady stream of Zeppelin, REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Journey (and by the way, why aren't any of these guys on the "Worst 50" list?), and nobody else was doing anything interesting.

Fast-forward to April, 2004: WXRT is now owned by Infinity and has teetered dangerously on the edge of becoming a parody of its old self. Fortunately, they still retain some of their edge, and is probably the only 'rock' station I listen to anymore.

The one that's truly a parody, though, is WDRV, the "classic rock" station. They took over the frequency of a long-respected classical station, WNIB, in 2001. When they announced the station, their ads said "We listened to you: we created a station that you want to hear." What I didn't realize was that the "station I wanted to hear" had exactly the same format and playlist as WLUP had in 1978. (No, not interested.) Styx-Journey-REO-arrrghhhh.

I had a point in all this. Oh yeah, "radio should be free."

My point is that I like the sounds I've heard on XM and Sirius, but I don't want to have to pay for that level of quality. Radio is such an easy thing to do right that we shouldn't have to pay for it beyond listening to an acceptable number of commercials per hour.

As a postscript, I will say that I support my local NPR station, so I guess on some level I am paying for quality.

On the next page you'll see the latest Arbitron ratings for the Chicago stations. I've added a couple comments.

The two main daily papers in Chicago, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, each have a "hip" little daily tabloid publication that's geared towards the young city-dwelling crowd. The Tribune's paper is called Red Eye, and the Sun-Times' is called Red Streak.

These papers basically take the top 10 news stories and squish 'em down into bite-sized paragraphs with a bunch of splashy graphics and prose like "Saddam's sons were rolling in the Benjamins before they got iced." And there's always a huge entertainment section so you can see big, color photos of, let's say, George Clooney while he was in town last week. Imagine a Weekly Reader for grownups and you'll have the idea. The paper is either given away or sold on the street for a quarter.

I dunno. If I were in the target demographic for this paper I'd be kind of insulted. I don't want to see a newspaper trying to relate to me in my own vernacular. It reminds me of Sister Sandra Marie in eighth grade telling us all to sit in a circle on the floor for a "rap session." Don't try to relate, just inform me.

The reason I brought this up is because there's a guy who's on the corner in front of the Sears Tower (well, kitty-cornered from it) who sells Red Eye, and every morning he seems to get louder and less intelligible as he calls out the headlines. He seems like a pleasant enough guy, and when he speaks to people in his normal voice, it's very clear. I always have trouble understanding what he's shouting every day. As a result, I decided to make a daily brainteaser out of figuring out what he's saying: sharpening up the mental pencil, as it were.

This morning, I heard this: "Ywwouurrrrrrdaaaarrrrgghhhhreeeeeedahhhhhhhhrahhheeeerrrrrrre..." It took a second, but I realized he said, "Your Daily Red Eye right here." That was an easy one.

Tomorrow morning, I'll let you know what I heard at the northwest corner of Adams and Wacker.

Just a quick note to let you guys know that Mr. Red Eye wasn't at his post this morning. And I was all primed for it, too. Maybe tomorrow.

Another quick thing about more evil in the world of food. Some of you are aware that I have a desk drawer known as "The Land of Chocolate" where I keep a stock of things suitable for bribes, thank yous, and edible trajectory devices. The other day I was at Costco and bought one of those thirty-five pound bags of the Hershey's Miniatures, and as you can see from the picture, the supply is almost depleted. I become a very popular guy when the LOC is open for business. I also hear the words "damn you" an awful lot when the drawer is opened.

Am I one of the few who really doesn't care if tonight is the Friends finale?

This morning, the front page of my local paper features the following: coverage of the president's non-apology; a story about whether or not slots should be allowed at Arlington Park; a piece on how gasoline is getting expensive; and an article about Rosemont mayor Donald Stephens' whining about how it cost the state over $1 billion because they didn't give him the last Illinois casino license 5 years ago (ahh, something about those pesky alleged mob ties).

At the top of the page, though-- above a photo of people protesting outside the barbed wire at Abu Ghraib prison-- is a piece talking about Friends' final show tonight, and a mini-guide that tells us how to plan out our viewing this evening (an hour-long retrospective begins at 7:00, followed by the two-hour finale at 8:00, and as a bonus, WGN-TV is showing the pilot episode at 6:00). The article jumps inside the paper to a lengthy analysis of the characters, their development, blah blah blah.

My question: Is this really that important?

I admit that I used to watch the show, and I thought it was cute in the beginning: all these attractive New York single people throwing their glib little comments at each other, living these fantasy lifestyles (and yes, I realize that was the whole point of the show). There were even some great one-liners in the show that I've been known to use in conversation. (The line in the subject of this blog entry was spoken by Chandler to Monica while they were watching home movies of an overweight Monica at her prom. The line above was preceded by Monica explaining, "you know, the camera adds ten pounds.")

All that said, though, Friends is the TV equivalent of those meringue cookies: light, sweet, and very little substance. It's sort of like you consume this thing and then it melts away and aside from the sweet aftertaste it's like it was never there in the first place.

Now, I know people who are fanatical about the show, and I suppose this is a big deal to them, but we're not talking about the M*A*S*H finale (which I admit I have never seen in its entirety) or even the final Mary Tyler Moore show. Friends just never seemed to be about anything.

The Brits had it right with many of their sitcoms-- they ended them after x number of episodes. The Blackadder series were great because they were specifically written so that they couldn't go beyond six episodes each. And the final episode of the last series, Blackadder Goes Forth, stands as the finest "final show" I've ever seen.

Okay, so I'm not a joiner. I won't be watching the show tonight-- I have other, uh, more important things to take care of.

I read today that my favorite TV show of all time, SCTV, is finally making it to DVD. This is big news.

SCTV was always funnier than Saturday Night Live, if you ask me. They had a very low budget and no big musical guests (at least in the beginning) so they made up for it in the writing which to this day remains fresh and hilarious. SNL in its golden days relied on drug humor when the creativity ran dry, which was just a cheap way to get out of a hole.

SCTV launched the careers of Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Harold Ramis, and Martin Short. All of these people have gone on to bigger and better things. In the years the show was aired, I don't think I ever saw a single episode that wasn't at least 80% brilliant. I'm a tough customer, and that says a lot.

Here in Chicago the show first aired at midnight, right after SNL. In those days (1976-1981) it was a syndicated half-hour show that ran, among other places, on the NBC-owned TV stations. In 1981, NBC pumped a bunch of money into it, cranked it up to a 90-minute show, and put the show on the network on Friday nights opposite ABC's Fridays (an SNL ripoff). Saturday Night Live was in a real slump during this time, and I remember hearing Rick Moranis talking about how NBC was thinking of cancelling SNL and putting SCTV on in its place.

This DVD set starts with that first NBC season, when the budgets got bigger and so did the show. The listing of the sketches mentioned on Amazon show that it's a great collection.

I may get to reclaim closet space from all those VHS tapes of SCTV-- finally.

Clear Channel radio issued this press release yesterday. Apparently, they want us to know that they care about the listening audience and that 20 minutes of commercials an hour can be a bad thing.

The press release says that the new policy goes into effect January 1. Wow. I'm glad to see this is such a high priority issue for them. ("Yes, we care about you-- that's why we're cutting down the number of commercials on our stations-- six months from now.") I suppose any listeners they lose between now and then are expendable.

Clear Channel's stations in Chicago are: WGCI (urban, don't listen to it); WGRB (gospel, don't listen to it); WKSC (dance, don't listen to it); WLIT ("lite" rock, dentist's office stuff); WNUA ("smooth jazz" or as my kids call it, "Grandma Music"); WVAZ (soul and r-n-b oldies); WRLL (50s and 60s oldies, and probably the only one in the bunch I actually occasionally listen to by choice).

All told, I won't notice the effect of Clear Channel's new policy.

I rarely listen to the major radio stations here in Chicago. Aside from the fact that most of them play commercials every time I hit the button, the music is repetetive garbage, and the hosts are lame. When my radio is turned on, it's usually tuned to the local NPR station or WXRT (which is under a corporate thumb, but it's better than anything else). When I want to hear music, I hook up the iPod.

Now, if the programmers would stop playing it safe with the music they play we might get somewhere.

I saw on the 'net today that the BBC's CeeFax videotext service is turning 30 years old today. Unless you've spent time in the UK (or Europe, where the television broadcasters there have similar services), you probably aren't familiar with CeeFax or videotext services.

In the days before the internet, there was a lot of talk about being able to get news, weather, sports, movie times, etc. through your TV. In the early 1970s, some British engineers discovered they could put pages of text on part of a station's TV signal which could be decoded at the user's end with the use of a special decoder box. This service would not be seen by people who didn't have the box, nor would it interfere with any of the station's regular programming.

Videotext services offer the user lots of information, presented in text and very rudimentary graphics (think Commodore 64), which could come in quite handy if there's no internet-connected computer nearby. I've used the videotext services on the German, Swiss, and Dutch TV networks while traveling in those countries, primarily for weather information (a picture of a cloud with raindrops coming out of it is universal).

Field Communications, the company that owned WFLD-TV Channel 32 here in Chicago, started a subscription-based videotext service in mid-1981 called Keyfax, where you could rent the decoder box and have all the services I described above. The company they set up to provide this service was called Keycom Electronic Publishing.

To get people interested in Keyfax, Channel 32 used to run the service "in the clear" from midnight to 6:00 am, meaning that you could watch the service (but not choose the pages that would be displayed) on your TV without being a subscriber. They called this program "Nite-Owl," and from what I read at the time it was very popular with insomniacs, third-shift people, and late-nighters who were just coming in.

Nite-Owl ran in 20-minute "orbits" of programming, with 20 minutes of news, sports, and weather, followed by 20 minutes of "leisure," then back for 20 more minutes of news. The video would refresh and give a new picture every 40 seconds or so, and the audio portion was a music bed of soft-rock.

It was actually pretty cool, having a service on your TV that would run a constant rotating stream of news, weather, business, and sports. In between the "main" segments, they would run trivia quizzes and contests, and they had a "Bulls-Eye Club" that you could join. They even had a "Viewer Mail" segment.

Keyfax was shut down in early 1983. Field Communications was being dismantled, and they sold their TV stations to Metromedia. These were the days when there were over-the-air pay TV services in Chicago, each of which required its own box to be attached to your set. And on top of all this, cable television was finally arriving in Chicago and the suburbs. Put all of this together, and the consumer was faced with many options as to how their TV dollars could be spent. There just wasn't enough interest to keep Keyfax going.

So, what began as a fairly powerful service on one part of the globe is barely a footnote here. It was pretty cool, though.

Finally, a truly unique stunt in Chicago media: today, WXRT has converted itself to all-request radio. For a $100 pledge to the American Red Cross to aid the tsunami victims, listeners get to request a song to be played on the air. The only stipulations are that they have to be under 4.5 minutes and "must conform to FCC standards" which I suppose means no overly nasty stuff.

According the on-air folks, this has been a tremendous success. I've been listening since about 9:00 this morning-- I've heard Frank Zappa, Martha and the Muffins, Shania Twain, XTC, Foreigner, The Cure, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, Madonna, Firefall, Johnny Nash, John Hiatt, Wilco, Buddy Guy's version of "Mustang Sally" (!), and the classical version of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown."

While it's great that a charity benefits from this, maybe this is a new model for radio--- the audience pays to hear what they want. If anyone in radio management has any sense at all, they would check this out and see what REAL listeners want to hear. (It would be reeeealllly cool if someone posted a set list of all this!)

For those of you reading this on Friday afternoon, this program goes until 5:00 pm CST today-- about another two hours. Check the WXRT web site to get the audio stream.

WXRT's stunt raised over $90,000 for the Red Cross. Pretty sweet.

On the way home from the office, I heard Cake's "Rock n Roll Lifestyle," The Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday," Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind," and a bunch of other great stuff. I pulled into the parking lot as they started playing "God Save The Queen" by the Sex Pistols.

I really hope some radio executives take notice of this. We need more variety on a single station. And it was the first time since I was in college that I actually kept a radio station on because I was waiting to hear what they would play next.

Here's the playlist from WXRT's all-request day on Friday.

Dig it.

One of Chicago's "Alternative Rock" stations, Q101, has tweaked its format; their slogan is now "Everything Alternative, Now on Shuffle."

This is interesting on a number of fronts. First and most importantly, it's about time someone in the radio industry acknowledged that since 1994 or so, "alternative music" was actually not alternative at all. Bands like Nirvana brought the sound from the far left end of the dial straight to the center, and radio stations popped up all over the country playing loud bands with fuzzy guitars and calling it "alternative."

In doing so, bands like XTC, New Order, OMD, the Clash, and The Smiths many of whom had roots in the New Wave/Punk movements, weren't really considered "alternative" or for that matter, considered at all. The only Chicago station playing them was WXRT. By adding these artists to their playlist, the long-overdue acknowledgment is finally given.

Widening the playlist, or to be more precise, saying you're widening the playlist, seems to be the thing to do in Chicago radio these days. Since Nine FM came on the air last year with their "We Play Anything" slogan, other stations have begun to copy the concept. 101.9-The Mix now has the slogan "Today's New Music... and Whatever We Want."

The other interesting thing is this "Shuffle" business. Further proving how narrow the thinking goes in radio marketing, I received a questionnaire from WXRT a few weeks ago where they asked listeners what they thought of a few new slogans. One of the proposed slogans was "Chicago's Finest Rock.. on Shuffle." Eeegh-- reading that made me cringe. I realize everyone wants to jump on the iPod bandwagon, but come on-- give it a rest already: the term "Shuffle" today will sound as hip as the word "Macarena" in a couple of months.

(Side note: I find it fascinating that WXRT was considering the "Shuffle" slogan, especially since those with Apple computers can't even hear the station streaming on the internet because WXRT's AOL streaming software only works on Windows systems.)

Q101 jumped the start on everyone though, and I have to give them credit for that: even the graphics on their web site mimic Apple's iPod Shuffle advertising campaign.

As for what all of this means: I have no idea. I am waiting to see if anything actually changes. On Q101 yesterday I heard "Birds Fly" by The Icicle Works, which I haven't heard since it was on MTV, and that's a pretty good start. Let's see if they can keep it up.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune ran a piece on its Op-Ed page called "The ubiquity of the iPod." Yes, it was another fluff piece about how all the white headphones we see daily are proof that the iPod is a cultural phenomenon which is changing the world, and will eventually change the way we do everything, including iPod-equipped lawnmowers so we can listen to Kelly Clarkson while keeping our suburban lawns neat.

(Okay, I made up the part about the lawnmower, but to the enterprising person who actually produces this product: my PayPal address will be provided on request.)

I won't go line-by-line through the article, mainly because it won't do any of us any good. Let's just say that the author is one of those legions of people who can't see the iPod for what it is: a Walkman with more storage space.

One point that deserves a response is that, while listening to a "podcast" from the Vatican, the writer realized that while "Rome and the Vatican were 3,000 miles away.. this small, white, diminutive device had transported me to the Sistine Chapel."

Uhhh, ever hear of a "small, diminutive device" called a radio? And let's be clear about something: a podcast is, by its very definition, not live. While this writer was listening to his recording of the Vatican, he missed a bunch of other stuff that was going on in the world at that moment. He may as well have been listening to coverage of President Roosevelt's funeral from 50 years ago.

And no iPod piece would be complete without the obligitory saccharine flow: "The iPod does not know any barriers--it is universally known and accepted. The iPod represents the next great step in technology for consumers, after the Internet and the cellular phone."

Bravo. I too see how a $300 music player has had such a tremendous impact on our society and is certainly a must-have item that's within the reach of each and every American citizen. Uh-huh.

Don't get me wrong: I own two iPods, and I use them daily. But I somehow manage to keep perspective about their impact on my life and the lives of people around me.

What gets me is that the Chicago Tribune devoted half a page to this piece of cotton candy. Maybe they figure the public is tired of Terri Schiavo, the Pope(s), Tom DeLay, etc. and we need to hear about something that's good in the world. So why not print a piece about a gadget that everyone seems to want?

Plus, it's about time someone went up and spoke out against that formidable anti-iPod lobby.

Since this is the kind of vapid self-promotion Tribune editors seem to want to publish, I'm already working on my piece for them. And maybe after I get my jollies from Googling my name out there, I'll get free HBO™ from Comcast® or DirecTV® after it's published.

In a news story first published in the Washington Post, it was reported that several TV shows' "gadget gurus" have taken payments from the companies whose products they gush about.

Corey Greenberg, tech editor for NBC's Today show, told The Wall Steet Journal that he has taken $15,000 each from Apple, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Seiko Epson, Creative Technology, and others to promote their products on news shows.

NBC claims no knowledge of Greenberg's receipt of payments, and Greenberg stated that he "never accepted payment to say nice things about a product in any venue." The network claims to have made changes to their policy following this event.

The assumption has always been there, that the people who hawk gadgets on news shows are getting some sort of compensation, but this is the first time I've seen actual evidence and a dollar amount attached to it.

I think I'm ready for my new career.

I keep seeing that commercial for an SUV where the dad walks into the room and sees his family sitting around staring at the TV. He takes the remote, turns the TV off, and tells his family to come with him. The commercial ends with everyone staring in wonderment, with mouths agape, at the night sky.

Yeah. Right. Gimme a second.

Mmphh. Hmmmpphh.. *ahem*

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Okay, I'm better now. Let me tell you what scenes were cut from that commercial:

(1) The part where the kids scream at Dad for turning off the TV;

(2) The part where the wife rolls her eyes at Dad because the kids were finally quiet, in the same room, and not beating the cr*p out of each other;

(3) The part where Dad has to stop at the Shell station and find a credit card that's not maxed out so he can buy an $85 tank of gas;

(4) The four-hour drive to a location where you can actually see stars;

(5) The part where the teenaged daughter is on her cellphone, text messaging her peeps;

(6) The part where the young son is complaining that the batteries in his Nintendo DS are burned out;

and finally:

(7) The part where Mom and Dad fall asleep because that's what happens the instant everything is quiet.

I love it when ad people get creative, especially the ones with no grasp of the reality of family life.

One of my favorite museums in Chicago closed last year in order to build their new home. The Museum of Broadcast Communications moved out of the Chicago Cultural Center (across from The Bean) and are preparing to move into their new space near Marina City.

Having grown up as a sort of real-life version of Martin Tupper, the MBC is the perfect place to see all sorts of childhood memories "in person." The sets and costumes from WGN's Bozo's Circus are there, as are the puppets from BJ & Dirty Dragon, Cartoon Town, and Gigglesnort Hotel. A bunch of Frazier Thomas' stuff is there, too, including his puppets and the set from Family Classics.

In addition to the TV stuff, there's a huge collection of radio memorabilia from the "golden days."

My friend Holly is a curator at the MBC and forwarded me the press release that's on the next page. It's good to see that media companies still take an interest in their past.

Check out today's column by Robert Feder in the Sun-Times.

Yeah, beat him by two days.

The Mix (101.9 FM, in case you are in Chicago and unaware of where the station's at) is running a promotion where you can win a trip to London to see Coldplay perform live.

The only snag is that the commercial for the contest starts with the opening bars of La Marseillaise, which is the French national anthem.

Edumacational media at its finest, folks.

This weekend, Chicago's oldies station switched formats. WJMK-FM is now running a format called "Jack," with the slogan "Playing what we want."

The sound you just heard was a target demographic yawning.

I read an interview with the program director of one of the Chicago stations which is already running one of the "whatever we want" formats. He said he "got the idea" for the format from sitting in a bar and listening to the variety coming out of the jukebox. Never mind the fact that the concepts of "Jack" and "Nine" have been circling in radio program directors' circles for years. WJMK's owners (Infinity) got the idea from an internet-radio station out of Vancouver that licenses the "Jack" format to other stations. This is their way of chasing down that 35-44 demographic.

While listening to the new "Jack" for a couple hours yesterday, I heard: "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears For Fears; "Boogie Shoes" by KC and the Sunshine Band; "Life in a Northern Town" by the Dream Academy; "Game of Love" by Santana and Michelle Branch; "Jesus is Just Alright" by the Doobie Brothers; "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World; and "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty.

It became clear what this format is all about: play songs from the last four decades that were overplayed when they were on the charts, then sprinkle in some current pop hits from bands like Green Day to seem cool. That way, the listener gets a lot of reeeeeaallllly familiar songs coupled with a few new ones. And if want to seem really hip, use the word "shuffle" or "random" or "iPod."

Lisa described the format best: "Songs I Never Need to Hear Again Before I Die."

"Jack" and "Nine" use a similar technique to what Time-Life uses to hook consumers into buying their "Tremendous Hits of the 80s" collections. The idea is to play little snippets of songs to get you to think, "Hey, that was a cool song!" and then hope that hearing that four seconds of "Cuts Like a Knife" by Bryan Adams will make you plop down $80 for a CD set you'll listen to twice.

The difference, of course, is that these radio stations play the entire songs, and four minutes of Bryan Adams is a lifetime longer than four seconds. And while there might be some initial interest in hearing "Cuts Like a Knife" today, we're still in that phase where the shrink wrap is just off the box. Six months from now it's going to be a different story.

In the meantime, WJMK's old format, DJs and all, is still available in streaming audio on the internet. The weird thing is that they're still using jingles that refer to 104.3, the stations position on the FM dial. Also, I don't believe the audience for the oldies format is inclined to sit in front of their computers and listen to the radio-- I wasn't a regular listener, but when I heard the station it was usually in a store or a restaurant. I suppose those establishments will jump to satellite radio now.

The best thing in all this is that once this fades, we can expect another fad to sweep the dial-- maybe it's time for disco to make a comeback.

In the latest issue of Esquire, musician John Mayer talks about Jack-FM:

Imagine a place on the dial that interviews you and your friends, asks what songs you like, and then plays them one after another. Almost no DJs, few commercials and lots of songs you forgot you loved. It's radio turned inside out.

I guess Mayer and his pals' "favorite songs" are limited to the top 10 songs of the last 20 years.

"Radio turned inside out?" [muffled laugh]

Now go sit down and listen to some more Frampton, John.

Yesterday at noon, WZZN-FM ("The Zone") dropped their "Alternative" format and became "Chicago's True Oldies Channel," thus filling a hole in the formats of Chicago's FM stations.

I find it unusual that they chose this time of year to make the change. Typically, people want to hear the Beach Boys and Motown hits while cruising around with the windows down. Maybe they would have made a bigger splash had they launched in June or July, when tempers were still high over WJMK's replacement with "Jack FM."

In any event, this is yet another in a looooong series of format changes for the 94.7 spot on the FM dial. Check this site to see everything it's been.

I wish them luck-- they're the only oldies player in town with a decent signal (I usually have trouble picking up WRLL-AM 1690, the other oldies station here), so they can't munge this up too badly. According to Robert Feder's column they intend on having a wide playlist, so that's a good thing.

Now maybe they can lure Fred Winston and Dick Biondi away from WJMK online.

I had an interview tonight with a producer from WTTW's Chicago Tonight. They are doing a piece on podcasting, and they may use some of my thoughts and possibly mention our 4th Time Around podcast on the air.

The show airs Thursday at 7:00 pm CST. If you're in the Chicago area, be sure to tune in!

My review of the Übercaster podcasting software package has been published in the August edition of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine. Click on the magazine cover under "View Current Issue," and you'll find the Ubercaster review on page 41.

You can also hear the dulcet tones of my voice reading the review at the magazine's site. Click "Reviews" under "B&P: Podcast Edition" and then hit the Play button.

The review encapsulated: Übercaster is an okay program, but it has a bit more growing to do.

Enjoy!

We were listening to WCKG, the former "Free FM" talk station at 105.9, just before 5:00 pm today and they were simulcasting WBBM-AM on their frequency.

I've always been sort of fascinated, in a geeky way, at how stations handle format changes, and this was an interesting stunt: WCKG played simulcasts of WBBM and other CBS-owned radio stations in the hours leading up to the new format's introduction.

Anyway, I wanted to hear how they would identify themselves at the top of the hour, and right at 5:00 pm there was a "whooshing" jingle and the introduction of the new "Fresh 105.9" followed by a U2 song.

Yup, 105.9 is now a "lite rock" station, perfect for listening while you're having a root canal. U2 was followed by Kelly Clarkson, and later by Gwen Stefani. Wow. Edgy.

Since WLIT 93.9 switched over to all-Christmas music last week, this is clearly an attempt by WCKG to snatch away any listeners who miss their KT Tunstall and John Mayer.

The thing is, WLIT stopped playing that music months ago. For some reason, they now define "lite rock" as the worst music of the 1970s: think KC and the Sunshine Band and Gloria Gaynor. You know, the stuff we'd rather forget about.

Will WCKG be successful with their target demographic-- Women, 25-54? I know at least one member of that demographic who's already rolled her eyes at the whole thing.

I just finished re-reading Valley Voices by John Russell Ghrist. This is a 1996 history of radio stations that were based throughout the suburbs of Chicago, with a primary focus of the towns in the Fox River Valley.

There are all kinds of interesting tidbits in the book, including the histories of Chicago stations WGN, WMAQ, WBBM, WLS, and all sorts of suburban stations like Elgin's WRMN, Aurora's WAUR, and Arlington Heights' own WWMM.

There are sections about WFVH (Forest View High School) and WHCM (Harper College), two stations that carried the dulcet tones of my voice. There's also a brief section on Zenith's radio station and the twin antenna towers that once stood at the corners of Rand, Central, and Mt Prospect roads in Mt Prospect. (I saw those towers almost every day when I was growing up.)

This was truly a labor of love for the author, given the level of detail that appears in the book. It must have been difficult to collect all this information, given the fact that most of it was compiled in the days long before Google and Wikipedia.

I had an e-mail exchange with the author recently, in which he told me he received many upper-level credits from Indiana University for his work on the book, resulting in the degree he'd been working on. He also said that updating the book-- even bringing it from 1996 to the present-- would be a monumental task, and that radio stations don't care about their history and "want to tell you about the junk they are playing these days." Excellent points.

Mr Ghrist is currently the host of Midwest Ballroom on WDCB in Glen Ellyn, and occasionally speaks at local libraries on the history of Chicago radio.

Two versions of this book exist: the version that's linked above is a softcover, and there was an earlier comb-bound "manuscript" version which contains significantly more detail and many more photos of the people, stations, and station logos and advertisements. This earlier version was self-published by Mr Ghrist in 1993 and, while it has more of an "amateur" feel to it, gives the reader an idea of how tremendous this effort truly was.

If you're a fan of radio, especially Chicago radio, and you happen to run across a copy of Valley Voices, be sure to pick it up.

Among the negatives I recently had digitized at ScanCafe, I discovered the results of a former hobby of mine: photographing TV screens.

When I first discovered 35mm photography (using my dad's Kodak Retina IIa fold-out camera) I got interested in all the things you could do by messing around with the shutter speed and aperture. While visiting a camera store I found a publication from Kodak called "Photographing Television Images" and I decided to give it a try, as it brought together my newfound hobby of photography with my already-embedded Radio/TV hobby.

The photo above is one of my very first attempts at shooting a TV screen: this is an image taken in 1976 of WCIU-TV's "Stock Market Observer" program. This show was a precursor to services like CNBC, and created a whole generation of financial market-watching geeks. This was shot on Ektachrome slide film. (To see more of what the show looked like, click this link to a clip on the Fuzzy Memories site.)

This is WCIU's test pattern, taken earlier the same day. The station's transmitter was on the top of the Board of Trade Building, and their signal was weaker than most of the other Chicago TV stations at the time. These were the days when stations would go off the air during the night, and WCIU would come on around 8:00 am each day.

Here are two more shots of the Stock Market Observer, this time from 1990. The improved TV signal, graphics, and interesting Dow Jones Industrial Average are all noteworthy. The lady in the photo is Linda Marshall, the previous generation's Maria Bartiromo.

These were also shot on Ektachrome, this time with a Pentax K1000. I went through a phase where I was processing my own transparency film, and these were part of that collection.

Back to January, 1976: NBC just introduced their new logo (which turned out to be already in use by a public TV network in Nebraska), and they were splashing it everywhere. This photo was taken using Kodak Verichrome print film in the Retina IIa, and as you can see the colors on the negative didn't hold up well over the years. That "N" is supposed to be red and blue, and the "5" should be white. (I chose to present these the way they were scanned rather then correcting them with PhotoShop.)

In the summer of 1976, WCFC came on the air as an all-Christian-programming station. This was the first new TV station in Chicago in many years, and now there was a stop as you spun your UHF dial from WFLD (channel 32) to WSNS (channel 44). This is one of their first test patterns and program cards for their locally-produced nightly show Chicago. This was shot on Tri-X film with the Retina IIa.

In 1983, another new station came on the air: the City Colleges of Chicago started WYCC on channel 20, and I caught these early test patterns. The camera was a Pentax K1000 and the film was 400-speed Kodacolor.

One of the neat things about growing up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago was that we could swing the antenna on the roof to the north and if conditions were right, we could pick up Milwaukee TV stations. This is another 1976 photo, showing a title card for WTMJ's local morning news segment during the Today show.

It's interesting to see these after so many years.